Wednesday, July 27, 2011

I know that I need to start gearing up for the pre-school year. It's almost a school year! :) Next month, hopefully, Madi will be starting school. I'll need to keep track of all the things that I need for Lily's pre-school. Or is it preschool? That always looks wrong to me. Oh well.

There are meet and greet nights, parents' nights. squeel! I have found that taking care of two little kids is very hard work. Babies are like the easy peasy part. It's when they start walking and getting into your makeup or cleaning supplies (looking at Lily who had to scrub the shower clean last night) that things get really interesting.

Lily and I slept together last night and I hugged her and thought of how soon it will be that she'll be a woman grown and probably no longer have the time for me.

So I'm starting to feel more like myself. I didn't know how long it would take to get over surgery. A week? A day? I mean, some people make such a big deal out of it. Most days I have at least one moment where I HAVE to sit down. I don't think I had that yesterday. But I've been trying to nap every day. This involves me waiting for Madi to sleep, then grabbing her and going over the rules with Lily:

#1 No leaving the house.#2 Don't let anyone in.

New rule:

#3 Don't start any fires.

I always feel nervous leaving Lily unattended but when momma needs a nap, she needs a nap! Usually Lily joins us about halfway through. :)

And this just about killed me:

Lily, to the Pest Control Guy: "Will the ants eat me?"

PCG: "Would you eat an elephant? To the ants, you're like an elephant." He goes outside.

Saturday, July 23, 2011

I'm still tuckered out. I guess I thought I'd be doing a lot better by now. I still need to take painkillers, though way less than when I first got home. And everyday, I find that I have a period where I just need to sit.

I'm not good at sitting. I mean, I'm good at sitting, but not the kind of sitting where you can't get up. I'm trying to figure out if that makes sense.

Blame the vicodin.

Anyhoo, life goes on. I'm still glad that everything worked out with the surgery: that whole day was one fluke to another. :) I'm so glad that my doctor sent me straight to the hospital. I mean, he looked really thoughtful about it, like maybe he wasn't sure and being cautious was the better way to go.

When I got there they said I was the third appendix person to show up in an hour. wheee doggies! It still cracks me up that I was in high heel wedge shoes. I didn't know I'd be going to the hospital. So that's what I had to prance around in, in the emergency room. lol

Ah well.

In other news, I'm really looking forward to the next time we go to Yorktown. G-ma has said she'll make soap with me! Pedro has some skin issues and can't use regular soap, like Dial, etc. He can only use the $5 a bar french-milled soaps. Needless to say, we can't afford his soap requirements. Sarah's soaps are free of all the yucky additives and Pedro doesn't have any reactions to them. So... we'll have some soap and I'll get an idea if it's something I want to do on my own. I know it's not super expensive to make soap but I want to get an idea of the equipment that I'll need.

Anyway, it's almost noon and the big dawg needs to get up. Wish me luck....

Thursday, July 21, 2011

Where to begin? So I got my appendix out. It was kind of all a fluke and went very smoothly.

Let's see... Monday night, I ate my dinner (grilled steak, mashed potatoes, peas) and I felt fine. Then I had some grilled turkey tenderloin and I hurt. I thought, well that serves me right for overeating. I had stuff to do and I kept on doing it, the pain wasn't THAT bad. Cleaned the sofas and the bathrooms, etc.

It was hard to fall asleep that night, I was uncomfortable. But it wasn't until 2:30am that I really started to hurt. I took some Advil and waited for that to kick in. Then I took one old Tylenol 3. Waited for THAT to work. Then I took another T3 and that finally worked, phew.

I've had a few gastrointestinal issues before so I was pretty sure it wasn't gastritis or gas pains. Those are sharp, stabbing pains that come and go. This was a chronic constant barrage of pain. I thought it might be my gallbladder since the pain was in the middle of my abdomen.

Sigh.

So we have an appointment with an OT for Madi who immediately tells me how awful I look. I know, I know.

I make an noon appointment with my doc. We talk a little and he starts pushing on my belly. The pushing was painful but it was the sudden release that made me want to scream. He steps back and looks really thoughtful and says "You need to go straight to the hospital". Now I've known Dr Peter for a few years and he's not the melodramatic type. So that shook me.

So we do go straight there. Not knowing I had a hospital visit in my future I was wearing a short skirt and hoochie mama heels. What? I couldn't get a hold of Pedro so I had to call a coworker and she was kind enough to find him for me.

We met at the hospital and Lily was crying and complaining about her appendix. Good grief.

I go in the emergency department and everyone's very nice but kind of not really believing my appendix story. Hey, I didn't want it to be my appendix either. But I drink that juice thing that makes your belly light up for the CAT scan as fast as I could and that was pretty fast because I'd only had a teeny fiber brownie for breakfast. I pretended it was a smoothie.

My blood work looked good, my white blood cells were only slightly above normal. They offered me morphine, which I declined. You know, I just wasn't looking like someone who was going to need surgery.

Then I get my CAT scan and that goes well. I think someone told me that it could take an hour to get results. Well, I barely had my butt in bed (ha, no pun intended) and the emergency doc comes over and says the radiology department had just called and I was going to be having surgery. I definitely had appendicitis.

C.R.A.P.

The surgeon showed up soon afterwards (amazing, I know) and she told me what she was going to do and that an OR had opened up and because I was an emergency, she bumped me into the slot. So everything was like, bam bam bam. Just all going so quickly and smoothly. I think it was 30 minutes after that conversation that I was out and undergoing surgery.

I mean, really. It was amazing.

I think the worst part was the antithetic. My throat still hurts today from the breathing tube even though my cuts look better. I had laproscopic? surgery. And the cuts were exactly where Dr Trahan said they'd be. I really liked her.

I also feel lucky because I liked just about everyone that looked after me.

Anyway, because I had that small breakfast, I was able to go into surgery immediately, you know? It was all such a fluke.

I also bitched and moaned about being hungry. I didn't beg for food or anything, it was just a constant complaint. I knew I couldn't eat until after surgery and man, did I feel like a hoagie. I never crave them but I did on Tuesday.

So I'm in hell. I mean the recovery room and I'm getting hungry again. It took forever to get my head together but I think I started asking when I was getting food. LOL! I was going to make a trip down to the cafeteria on my own if dinner was over. Really.

Waiting for me in my room was a cup of hot chicken soup. OMG Nothing had every looked or smelled so good. My nurse observed, slightly intimidated, the way I annihilated my soup and came back with....

A HOAGIE!!!!!!!

omg I must've had some seriously good karma saved up! Pedro and the girls showed up at this point and I warned them that I was not sharing. I was still slightly nauseous and it took me an hour to eat the whole sandwhich but my belly felt SO good for it. :)

And that's it, I guess. G-ma was able to come up yesterday to watch the girls so I could get some sleep and sleep I did. whew At the hospital, I had compression thingies on my legs and they checked my vitals every so often and if I bent my left elbow then the IV stopped and an alarm went off. So I didn't get to sleep all that much...

But I feel better today and wow, for an emergency, things went better than could be expected. Thanks everyone for your well wishes. I just need to have a goodbye party for my appendix and I can wrap it up. :)

Epilogue:

The surgeon told me that one end of my appendix was fine and the other was funky.

The cuts she made were just below the bikini line where she said she was going to make them.

Monday, July 11, 2011

I logged in and it actually worked. So, not a lot to report this week, which I guess is good. I got Lily's preschool application off and they just called to let me know that they got it. I'll be meeting with the school in a few weeks to make sure that Madi is still eligible for their program. Still haven't seen the genetics testing results. phew But still things are sort of evening out again.

Pedro's been sleeping more with Madi. Too bad I haven't been sleeping well. argh Lily either wakes me up in the middle of the night or it takes me hours to fall asleep. Sigh. I do worry about Madi. I found the results from her last doctor's visit and she's fallen from the 40% for height down to 11%. Now, I know trying to measure a wiggly baby isn't an exact science but that's still worrying. We go back next month for another height/weight check.

I did bring up a growth hormone deficiency. Just throwing around ideas. I mean, 3 out of the 4 of us in this house are above average height and weight. Lily just because she's such a big kid.

I am still so glad to see her walking. She can bend over and pick things up and not fall down. Usually. :) And yes, she's my snuggle bear. Be careful what you wish for: I wanted a snuggly baby. :)

Monday, July 4, 2011

We went down to Busch Gardens over the weekend. I won't advertise that stuff until after the fact. I know it might be... I can't think of the word but just in case someone sees something on here or on Facebook. I don't need to let everyone know that we're not going to be here. You know? I did tell one neighbour but she's a good egg.

Anyway, so I dumped all the photos off of my phone and this included pics from my old phone. The one of Madi in the pink hat just cracks me up. She reminds me of that sidekick guy in the old western movies. Can't think of his name...

So I think we did pretty well at Busch Gardens. Pedro had issues with waiting for everyone and it looked like he was about to pass out from heat stroke but we made it. We didn't go on a lot of rides on Saturday. I got to go on more rides on Sunday. Also, this was pretty much Madilyn's level of happiness all weekend. I tried to get her out of the stroller a little bit to cool off.

This was Lily's first ride ever. :) And she chose the super sparkly hat. Which you might not be able to tell is sparkly from the picture. Sigh. So anyway, I have a year's pass so we'll likely be going back a few more times this year.

This was the best pic of Lily and Pedro. I'd get to one end of the ride just as they went to the other end. argh But it looks like they had fun. Madi was obviously too small for most of the rides. I think next time, I'll make sure that I have their bathing suits and Madi can crawl and play around the water park. I'll need to bring something for me to wear as well. :/

I think you can tell by all the water around the pool that they weren't just sitting there nicely. :p It was nice to sit there with g-ma and Aunt Maria just watching the girls. (while all the guys napped) Oh and just one more thing....